An unconventional, controversial view of U.S. foreign policy

books:

	• Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project) Noam Chomsky Holt Paperbacks, 2004 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 274 reviews view larger image
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Offers no solution

This is a very insightful, biased, anti-American, and perhaps slightly even an anti-humanity piece of work.

This book is full of events Chomsky claims US did to sabotage and destroy foreign countries. Chomsky offers insights into US's foreign policies and what it has done to accomplish "global dominance" (Chomsky claims US has openly said these specific words, but I find no reference). I take them to be true, and I think everyone should know what has happened. However, he accuses US of hypocrisy, and yet, he does not offer any solution to our current state. He merely points fingers and still enjoys the life he has in the US. To me, he is a hypocrite also.

His critique does not extend to just the Bush administration but to basically how the US runs in general. One example is his critique of military research expenditure in the US. US does spend more money than anyone other country, and I agree that these private companies like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are too subsidized. He is right when he says that we, the people, are basically paying for a lot of that without our knowledge (most people don't know where their tax money goes). However, even though he admits military technology makes transition to the public sector if it proves useful, he fails to appraise this fact. A lot of useful things we use today are from military research: satellites and jets just to name a few.

Another major part of this criticism is the US' propaganda campaign through media. He is against "protecting the minority of the opulent against the majority," as James Madison put it. This propaganda keeps the public submissive and without too much awareness of what is actually going on outside of their country. Perhaps, it is not right to try to control the public mind, but it is not necessarily wrong, either. It seems to me that Chomsky wants every individual to have his own mind and his own opinion. People need to be controlled to maintain a stable state, as proven well with our successful country and failed systems in other parts of the world, but Chomsky is against this. I can't even start to imagine Chomsky's world. It is important to recognize how well this "propaganda" has worked for us in the US and not just denounce it (give a solution if you're going to point fingers).

In essence, though, Chomsky doesn't seem to have faith in the entire humanity. He says humans are savages that only destroy life on the plant and, perhaps, it was a mistake that humans came to be in this stage of advancement in the first place. As he states, the average life span of a species on this planet is about 100,000 years, and says we'll see if nature has made an error in letting humans advance so much. Overall, I somewhat enjoyed this book, but I cannot tolerate some of the things he says. Therefore, I give this book a 3 out of 5.

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An unconventional, controversial view of U.S. foreign policy

Most commentators view globalization almost exclusively from an economic perspective. However, controversial iconoclast Noam Chomsky, a well-known left-wing (some would say far left) academic, famed also as an innovator in linguistics, discusses globalization's political impact as the modern driver of U.S. foreign policy. Political economics is a sensitive topic, but Chomsky doesn't hold back as he argues that U.S. foreign policy has been imperialist since World War I. He contends that in the invasion of Iraq, and earlier forays elsewhere, the U.S. disregarded the U.N. as well as public opinion at home and abroad. Chomsky makes important, though contentious, points, but he would have a wider audience if he developed a more comprehensible writing style, avoided torturously long sentences, and provided more background on some events he covers, particularly America's more esoteric political and military interventions. He is provocative, subjective and deeply negative about the U.S. (even referring to it as a "terrorist state") and its allies. getAbstract finds this book may intrigue those who want to know about political thinking at all ends of the spectrum. (As is true of every Abstract, the following views are those of the author and not of getAbstract.)

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A Must Read

Direct, blunt and confrontational. Chomsky has started me on a new search for truth, first fo myself, then hopefully for others.

Silenced by Seriousness

Just when I thought I had reached the lowest muck of political cynicism, Chomsky shows me another level of hell. His revelations about America's Grand Imperial Strategy might make your stomach curl, while his endless banter about Israel wiil undoubtedly put you to sleep. In this book he swings from haunting insight to putrid hopelessness in a heartbeat. I thought I would love his intellectual perspectives but alas he leaves the reader with little light to guide their way out of the fog. I'm sure I can learn a lot more from him but in the future I'll take it in small doses.

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CHOMSKY IS OUR WATCHDOG WITH ONE EYE CLOSED

America needs Noam Chomsky (even with his faults) because America has an abundance of proles who hang out down in Plato's cave watching the shadows on the wall and building their belief systems based on those shadows. If it wasn't so sad, I would almost say it's amusing to observe these proles as they slowly and gradually receive information contrary to those shadows, like the revelations in Scott McClellan's book that just came out in June, 2008. But a much bigger punch gets delivered by Mr. Chomsky ever so often, as he writes book after book on the terroristic foreign policy of the US. People choose to dismiss Chomsky because his assertions are not repeated in the mainstream media (as if the government-controlled mainstream media would bite the hand that feeds it). Chomsky is undeterred. He cites country after country, in the Western Hemisphere and abroad, where US foreign policy has murdered thousands of innocent people, and he leaves no confusion in his wake about the US being a major state-sponsored terrorist nation. It's a sad realization that the virtuous constitutional republic we all learn about in the schools is just a big lie. But cold hard truth is always depressing, isn't it (have you stepped on the weight scales lately?)? For those of you who don't understand why the US gov't is this way, simply look no further than Mr. Chomsky's subtitle: "...America's Quest for Global Dominance". But while Mr. Chomsky is willing to villify the US in foreign matters, he won't touch American-sponsored DOMESTIC terrorism. Why? Can you say...book sales???

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

"Reading Chomsky today is sobering and instructive . . . He is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet." -The New York Times Book ReviewAn immediate national bestseller, Hegemony or Survival demonstrates how, for more than half a century the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing-as in the Cuban missile crisis-to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks. World-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this perilous moment and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species.With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky tracks the U.S. government's aggressive pursuit of "full spectrum dominance" and vividly lays out how the most recent manifestations of the politics of global control-from unilateralism to the dismantling of international agreements to state terrorism-cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our existence. Lucidly written, thoroughly documented, and featuring a new afterword by the author, Hegemony or Survival is a definitive statement from one of today's most influential thinkers.

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